UNIT – I
Travel
Heaven’s Gate
Objectives of the Lesson
• Siddharth Pico Ragahvan Iyer shares his travel experiences of Ladakh.
• Description of Ladakh’s religion and gompas.
• The culture, heritage and local festivals of Ladakh.
• The revenue and income sources of Ladakh.
• Ladakh corps, cultivation and their varieties of food.
• Development of tourism.
• The contribution of Tourists and foreigners (Norberg-Hodge) and their role in
preservation of Ladakhis culture.
• The transformation of Ladakhis life style with the impact of western culture.
Important Points
•
Who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet? Padmasambhava
•
The Indian reformer Padmasambhava belonged to the eighteenth
century
•
Ladakh is called the highest motorable pass in the world.
•
Ladakh borders both Tibet and Pakistan
•
Ladakh has been one of the most cosmopolitan posts in the Himalayas
for centuries. And through which traders used to transport Silk, Indigo,
Gold and Opium
•
Tsewang Dorje is a young, urbane travel agency manager, whom the
author met in Ladakh.
•
Lamp post of Leh says “say no to polythene “
•
Ladakh’s fashion conscious teenagers are all fluent in every verse of
‘Hotel California’
•
One day, the author found musicians sitting on the ground among the
poplars
•
Pico Iyer said ‘Ladakh is a way to retrieve something lost, sustaining
within us that, which once experienced, comes to seem as contemporary,
as invigorating, as tomorrow’.
Introduction to the Author
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer was born in Oxford, England in 1957. His parents
were Raghavan N, an Oxford philosopher and theosophist and the religious
scholar Nandini Nanak Mehta. He is an essayist, novelist and is famously known
as a travel writer. Having grown up a part of - and apart from - English, American
and Indian cultures, he became the first so-called ‘travel writer’. The Utne Reader
named him in 1995 as one of the 100 visionaries who could change your life. He
won Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. He is the author of eight books.
The present piece of prose “Heaven’s Gate” was written by Pico Iyer and
extracted from the website (www.travel.nytimes.com)of Newyork Times.
Ladakh is his favourite place. Praising Ladakh, he says ‘ As the great centers of
Himalayan Buddhism – Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan – are swept by the winds of change,
in the Indian region of Ladakh, ancient temples stand solitary on mountain tops
and the traditional ways still thrive.
Question and Answers
Short Question and Answers:
1Q. What animals and trees did the writer find in the Nubra valley?
Ans: Pico Iyer, the author of the Heaven’s Gate, visited Leh, Capital of Ladakh.
He is fond of Ladakh people, their culture and life style. He gave a minute
description of everything he found unique there. It includes animals, trees,
landscapes and old monuments which he noticed as soon as he started.
He began his journey on a single-lane road towards the Nubra valley. On his
way, he came across various animals, trees, landscapes and old buildings.
Marmots scrambled across his path. In the distance, some wild asses, or Kiang
were also found. Right behind these, he saw the most pristine and surreal
(dream-like) landscape, which he has not seen in his 25 years of life. On every
side of his journey, he found an extended huge flat plain towards snowcaps. The
dry riverbeds bisected the emptiness like tears. In a few places, fortresses like
two-story buildings were clustered together in the patches of green. In the midst
of this silence, apricot trees and willows were also found. He also noticed twohumped Bactrian camels searching for their food in the dunes.
Thus, the author came across animals, trees, landscapes and buildings on his
way.
2Q. How did the writer’s observations match descriptions he had read of
the way people live in Ladakh?
Ans: The author had great affection for Ladakh. Prior to his visit, he heard of
Ladakh’s culture and their way of living from books and people. He heard that it
is the high, dry region in the northern India and also borders Tibet. It is often
called ‘the world’s last Shangri-La’ (Imaginary Paradise). He saw there one of the
planet’s greatest centers of Himalayan Buddhism, which arrived in this region
several centuries before it got spread to Tibet.
He further came to know about social life of Ladakh in Andrew Harvey’s radiant
book ‘Journey in Ladakh’. He read that people of Ladakh live as they used to live
several centuries ago, in whitewashed houses amid fields of Barley and wheat
irrigated by glacial snowmelt. He was all in praises for Ladakh, ‘the land of high
passes’, which was the rarest place which preserves its pastoral existence till
today.
3Q. What did the writer discover to his surprise on reaching Ladakh, which
he had imagined to have had no contact with other parts of the world?
Ans: Pico Iyer thought that Ladakh would not have any contacts with the rest of
the world. When he visited Ladakh, he got surprised and came to know that
Ladakh also borders Pakistan. It reminds him of the Indian soldiers who guard
their country on the boarders in the snow. He also found officially that Ladakh
takes in the Muslim region of Kargil. So, about half of its population is Islamic. He
elated to know that his favourite place has also been one of the most
cosmopolitan trading posts in the Himalayas for centuries. Through this route,
traders used to transport silk, Indigo, gold and opium to Kasmir, Yarkand and all
the other great caravan stops of the Silk Road.
In this way, the author visited Ladakh with his own thoughts and got surprised
with its contacts with other parts of the world.
4Q. What do you think the writer means when he says, ‘I saw faces of that
spoke of Lhasa, Heart, even Samakand?
Ans: The words of the writer imply that he saw faces of the people who belonged
to places called Lhasa, Heart and Samakand. (i.e. Lhasa is a city and capital of
the autonomous region of Tibet. Heart is a city in northwestern Afghanistan,
situated on the Hari River. Samarkand is a capital city of Samarkand Oblast,
central Uzbekistan, located in the valley of the Zeravshan River and is the oldest
city in central Asia).
When the author stepped out on his first day in Leh, he saw faces that spoke of
Lhasa, Heart and Samakand. He also interacted with many other people there.
Some of them were skullcapped Muslim elders. And some, he learnt belonged to
Indo-Iranians, who trace their blue or green eyes to Alexander the Great.
5Q. How do travelers to the ‘otherworldly and highly magical’ Ladakh affect
the people who belong there?
Ans: Ladakh is a tranquil and serene place with beautiful lush green landscapes.
It attracts many tourists from different parts of the world. The compact,
otherworldly and highly magical Ladakh is the latest treasure to exaggerate its
paradoxes of civilization and its discontents. Ladakh’s temples which constructed
at very high altitude seem to mock gravity. Its kaki-coloured stretches of
emptiness with small Buddhist stupas above them and the tree-lined walks out of
Leh were more beautiful than any other thing the author had seen in Bhutan or
Tibet itself.
He said that its the same wonders and beauty that also brought a new
restlessness in the form of development to the Ladakh people. In the process of
development, people now fill Leh’s narrow streets with construction cranes and
reviving Suzukis. It results in their realization of their future lies in a packaging or
even abandoning their past of rich cultural and heritage.
6Q. What does the writer tell us to show that while young people in
Ladakh’s towns prefer western ways of entertainment, people in rural areas
continue to enjoy their old, local forms of my music and sports?
Ans: The author experienced both western influence on youth on one side and
the other side steps to preserve significance of local forms of music and festivals.
On one Saturday evening, he went to the Desert Rain Coffeehouse for an ‘Open
Mike’ night. There he found himself only the foreigner among Ladakh’s fashionconscious teenagers. All of them are fluent in every verse of ‘Hotel California’.
The author found that if we walk just ten minutes out of the town, we would find
shady rustic lanes. Here people with ancient faces are working in the fields.
Some of them found going to temples as if they never heard of Paris (or Paris
Hilton). One day, he also found musicians sitting on the ground among the
polars, playing at intervals while a team of elegant men in black robes took on a
team of elegant men in white in a traditional archery competition. Scores of the
competition are displayed on the blackboard. Each side players dance before
and during the competition.
These are some of the contradictory observations of the author in Ladakh, both
on the fashion conscious youth in cities and culture conscious people in rural
places.
7Q. What are the contributions of the travelers in the development of
Ladakh?
Ans: Ladakh is a tranquil and serene place with beautiful lush green landscapes.
It attracts many tourists from different parts of the world. Consequently, Ladakh is
something of a test case of what good as well as bad that can be brought by the
travelers. Most of the travelers committed themselves for the protection of selfsustaining traditional world they have discovered here. One of the first
Europeans to settle in Leh, Helena Norberg-Hodge, arrived in 1975. She set up
an ecology center and a womans’ alliance and a number of other organizations
which aim at preserving what is unique in Ladakh before it is gone.
When author visited a womans’ alliance, he found its workers busy in
constructing what would be the first restaurant here. The purpose of this
restaurant is to serve and give life to the real and traditional Ladakhi food. But he
was told that it is a difficult task as local ingredients cost more than imported
ones these days.
The constructive and protective efforts of tourists like Norberg-Hodge are always
worth remembered. Another positive impact is signs flying from the lampposts of
Leh stating, ‘Say No to Polythene’. Use of plastic bags is also prohibited in town.
Even in the airport, the author was greeted with a sign instructing, ‘Mindful
Tourism’, and Pamphlets which imply avoid buying from multinational
corporations as they destroy local economies. Discussions are held regularly
about developmental activities like tourism in the Woman’s alliance.
Thus, most of the tourists who visited Ladakh played an important role to protect
Ladakh’s culture and heritage besides bringing awareness to Ladakh people to
improve their economy.
Haragovind Khorana
Objectives of the Lesson:
•
To inspire students from the life and achievements of Haragovind
Khorana, a scientist of this golden period.
•
To encourage students for continuous learning and life-long research
•
To assist students use English flawlessly and appropriately in the contexts
of science and Technology.
•
To demonstrate how Khorana’s contributions play pivotal role in
nucleotides
•
To explain students how Khorana corroborated Nirenberg’s findings that
the way to DNA ‘s functions of a new cell
•
To show how Khorana synthesizes obligonucleotides, that strings of
nucleotides
•
To inspire students from an ideal Indian Scientist who won the Nobel
prize
Important Points for Objective Paper
1. Khorana was born in a little village Raipur, part of West Pakistan, in
British India
2. Khorana’s date of birth is unknown but official documents show it as
9th Jan, 1922.
3. Khorana’s fathes was a Patwari, avillage agricultural taxation clerk.
4. Khorana completed his schooling in D.A.V.High Schol, Multan (now in
Pakistan)
5. Ratan Lal was one of his inspiring teachers who influenced him greatly
during his schooling.
6. Khorana obtained his M.Sc. from Panjab University.
7. Mr. Mahan Singh was Khorana’s great teacher, accurate expermentalist,
and his supervisor in Panjab University.
8. Khorana studied his Ph.D from the University of Liverpool, England
9. ROGER J. S. Beer was Khorana’s supervisor in his Ph.D.
10. Khorana spent a year at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in
Zurich with Professor Vladmir Prelog for doing postdoctoral work.
11. Khorana stayed in Cambridge from 1950 till 1952.
12. He started his research on nucleic acids during the fellowship at the
university.
13. Khorana was offered a job by Dr.Gordon M. Shrum of British Columbia in
1952.
14. Hargobind later held fellowships and professorships in Switzerland at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Universities of British
Columbia and Wisconsin.
15. Khorana joined the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of
Wisconsin In 1960.
16. Khorana corroborated Nirenberg’s findings in 1960’s.
17. Khorana shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1968.
18. Khorana shared the Nobel Prize with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert
W. Holley
19. The three scientists received the Nobel prize in 1968 for their
interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein
synthesis.
20. They delivered their Nobel lecture on Dec, 12, 1968.
21. Khorana made his contribution to genetics in 1970.
22. Hargobind Khorana got married in 1952 to Esther Elizabeth Sibler who
is of Swiss origin.
23. Khorana and his team developed the first artificial copy of a yeast
gene
24. Khorana joined as the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, United States as Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and
chemistry, Emeritus in 1971.
25. In 1976 Khorana led the team first synthesized a biologically active
gene
26. Dr. Khorana’s invention of oligonucleotides has become indispensable
tools in biotechnology
27. Khorana showed that some of the codons prompt the cell to start or stop
the manufacture of proteins.
28. Khorana currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
as Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and chemistry, Emeritus.
Questions and Answers
1Q. What kind of a job did Khorana’s father hold?
Ans: Khorana’s father was ‘Patwari’. Pawari was a village agricultural taxation
clerk in the British India system of government.
2Q. What was his attitude to his children’s education?
Ans: Khorana’s father had a good attitude to his children. Although they were
poor, his father was determined to educate his children. They were the only
literate family in Khorana’s village, which was inhabited by about 100people.
3Q. How did the government of India help Hargobind in his studies?
Ans: Khorana lived in India until 1945. During the same time, the government of
India fellowship threw an opportunity at him. And it made possible for him to go to
England.
4Q. Where and what did Hargobind study after he obtained a fellow ship?
Ans: He studied Ph.D in England at the University of Liverpool. He completed his
Ph.D under the supervision of Roger J.S.Beer, who not only supervised his
research but also, looked after Khorana sincerely and affectionately. This was a
major exposure to western civilization and culture to Khorana.
5Q. What was the role of Dr.Gordon M. Shrum of British Columbia in
Khorana’s career?
Ans: Dr.Gordon M. Shrum played an important role in the career of Khorana. His
career started flourishing when Dr.Gordon M. Shrum of British Columbia, offered
him a job in 1952. The British Columbia Research Council offered at that time
very little in the form of facilities, but there was a great scope of freedom to do
whatever the particular researcher liked to do. During the following years, Dr.
Shrum inspired, encouraged and helped Khorana frequently. This apart, Dr. Jack
Campbell gave his scientific counsel to Khorana. It resulted in forming a group
(consists of Khorana), began to work in the field of biologically interesting
phosphate esters and nucleic acid. During this period, Khorana earned many
devoted and loyal colleagues. There was one among them, Dr. Gordon M. Tener,
who contributed positively to the spiritual and intellectual make up of the group.
6Q. Who are the other two significant people khorana met in Vancouver?
Ans: The two significant people Khorana met in Vancouver were Dr. Shrum and
Dr.Jack Campbell. They were his devoted and loyal colleagues of this period.
They played a prominent role in his career during that period.
7Q. What did Khorana achieve in the early 1960’s?
Ans: Khorana made rapid progress in the early 1960’s. He joined the Institute of
Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin in 1960. During this period, he
corroborated Nirenberg’s findings the way the four different types of nucleodites
are arranged on the spiral ‘staircase’ of the DNA molecule determines the
chemical composition and function of a new cell. Next, the 64 feasible
combinations of the nucleotides are read off along along a strand of DNA as
required to reproduce the desired amino acids, which are the building blocks of
proteins. Khorana supplemented details about which serial combinations of
nucleotides from specific amino acids.
He also established that the nuclear code is always transmitted to the cell in
groups of three, called codons. Khorana also showed that some of the codons
prompt the cell to start or stop the manufacture of proteins.
8Q. Who did Khorana’s share the 1968 nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine
with and with what was their work concerned?
Ans; Khorana shared his Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1968 with
Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley. Their work was concerned with the
research that helped to show how the genetic components of the nucleus control
the synthesis of proteins. In other words, the research helped to show how the
nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the
cell’s synthesis of proteins.
Thus, the three scientists received Nobel Prize in 1968 for their interpretation of
the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.
9Q. What were khorana achievements during the 1970’s?
Ans: Khorana made a wonderful contribution to Genetics in 1970, when he and
his team were able to synthesize the first artificial copy of a yeast gene. Later, in
1971 Khorana joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as
Alfred P. Solan Professor of Biology and Chemistry.
In 1976, Khorana led the team of the first synthesized a biologically active gene.
His work paved a way for much of the basis for gene therapy and biotechnology.
He was also the pioneering scientist to synthesize oligonucleotides, that is,
strings of nucleotides. These customized pieces of artificial genes are widely
used in biology labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and
animals.
Dr. Khorana’s invention of oligonucleotides has become indispensable tools in
biotechnology. In response to this demand, Dr.Khorana’s invention has become
mechanized and commercialized to such extent that now one can fax a genetic
sequence of choice to one of many mail order companies, and the synthetic gene
is shipped in return mail.
These were some of his achievements during 1970’s. Thus, he is unique among
the scientists of this golden period.
10Q. What kind of a role did Khorana’s wife Esther Elizabeth Sibler play in
his career?
Ans: Khorana got married in 1952 to Esther Elizabeth Sibler, who is of Swiss
origin. They had three children. She was a caring and encouraging lady in his
life. She played a very significant role in his life. She has become a great source
of strength and support to him. All through his career, she strengthened his
sense of purpose. This was especially true during the 6 year absence from his
own country of birth. During this stay, Khorana felt out of place everywhere and
at home he felt nowhere.